Slickdeals App Store Spotlight

Slickdeals is an app designed to help users find and share deals and coupons. With Black Friday approaching, the app’s optimization has been adjusted to target the shopping season. Seasonality requires updating several aspects, including the title, creatives and description. It’s especially important to write an app description tailored to the platform the app is on, including incorporating keywords and testing for conversion. With that in mind, Slickdeals is the subject of this week’s App Store Spotlight, where we see if it can compete in the biggest shopping season of the year.

iOS

On the Apple App Store, Slickdeals is #93 in the Shopping category. It’s the first app in searches for “best deals,” “deals” and “shopping deals,” as well as #4 for “digital coupons” and “hot deals.” With Black Friday approaching, the app has been refocused to target relevant terms – Slickdeals ranks #6 in searches for “Black Friday 2019,” #5 for “Black Friday app” and #8 for “Black Friday.” It still has room to grow for many keywords, as it ranks #19 for “in store coupons,” #22 for “savings apps” and #23 for “coupon app.”

Creatives: Slickdeals has seven screenshots on the Apple App Store, each one using the same blue and white color scheme. Each one features callout text on the top of the image, presenting value propositions like “see the best daily deals in one app.”

As part of its seasonality, the creative set has been updated so that a screenshot saying “Save on all Black Friday deals” is the first image. This means the first thing users see when the app appears in searches will be information relevant to Black Friday.

The screenshots also utilize in-app imagery such as chat boxes and icons outside of the handset in the picture. These use visual symbolism to indicate what features and deals the app provides.

Title & Subtitle: The app’s title has been updated from “Slickdeals: Save with Coupons” to “Slickdeals: Black Friday Deals.” This helps with its seasonal targeting, as it uses all 30 characters for branding and Black Friday keywords.

The subtitle, “Savings, Coupons & Promo Codes” also uses all 30 characters that Apple allows. Each term used is an important keyword, while the subtitle still conveys information about the purpose of the app. This is a good use of the title and subtitle space.

Description: The app description is essential for conveying the uses and features of the app. It should be easy to read at a glance and informative, while incorporating relevant keywords.

The iOS app description for Slickdeals is lengthy, featuring several large paragraphs. While it conveys the purpose of the app, it does so in several large blocks of text which users will typically glance over when viewing on their phones. It could easily be broken down into shorter lines that concisely convey the information, as well as feature sets to delve into the app’s functionality.

While the app’s title and creatives have been updated for Black Friday, the description itself has not. The app description does not talk about how users can find the best Black Friday deals or why they should download it for Black Friday. Even if it’s implied that it will help them find Black Friday deals, calling it out early on in the description or promotional text can help improve conversions. Promotional text is a great area for calling out events like Black Friday deals, since it can be changed to focus on different events (such as Cyber Week or holiday sales) without needing a new build of the app.

Using feature sets would also make it easier for users to glance through the description and understand how the app works. For instance, the app description features a line about how “The best Popular Deals are screened by our Deal Editors after getting enough votes to be considered for the Frontpage.” This lengthy explanation could easily be turned into a bullet point on a feature list stating how top deals get voted to the front page.

Google Play

On the Google Play Store, Slickdeals is #44 in the Shopping category. It ranks #1 for “deals,” “deal catcher” and “deals app,” #2 for “deal finder,” and #3 for “shopping deals.” The app is also #5 for “Black Friday Deals” and #6 for “Black Friday.” Its rankings can improve for terms like “in store coupons” (#21), “coupons app” (#22) and “weekly sale ads” (#23).

Creatives: Slickdeals uses identical screenshots on iOS and Google Play, although the handset device shown in the creative sets are adjusted for each store. As with iOS, this starts off with a screenshot calling out the Black Friday deals, ensuring that users who click on it in the Play Store will see upfront how it connects to the event.

Description & Metadata: As with iOS, Slickdeals has an updated title to call out the Black Friday deals. However, the app description is identical on both stores without being optimized.

Google Play app descriptions should have their keywords placed at the front of each line to best target them. The Slickdeals app description does not do this, beginning lines with phrases like “There are people in this world who pay full price” and “If you prefer a more hands-off approach.” Refocusing the description to target keywords such as “Find deals” and “in-store coupons” could help it improve its rankings for those terms.

Feature sets can help here as well. Listing out features in the app description can make it easier for users to understand what the app has to offer while targeting keywords. Additionally, the app’s short description could be updated to call out Black Friday and similar holiday sales.

Overall

Slickdeals has updated its screenshots and title for Black Friday, but the app description is important too. Rewriting the description to be optimized for each store, including adjusting the line length for readability and adding feature sets, could help improve conversions and target more Google Play keywords.

With Black Friday around the corner, shopping and deals apps will be competing for the top stop in search results. Slickdeals has updated its title and creative assets for Black Friday, but a well-written description is equally important for overall App Store Optimization. Structuring an app description for each store can help apps like Slickdeals stand out from the competition.